John Gilstrap - No mercy

Maybe he was overreacting. Jonathan was paranoid as hell that his friends and his staff might be victimized as a result of his work, and he’d years ago insisted that Venice and Dom both have sensors implanted under the skin near their armpits that would allow for easy tracking if the worst happened. He also insisted that they both carry panic buttons-Dom’s in the form of a crucifix, and Venice’s in the form of a gold pendant-that would kick emergency procedures into gear if needed. Venice had a panic button in her desk that would accomplish the same thing. If she were in the kind of trouble that Dom suspected, wouldn’t she have activated the system?

He decided he didn’t care. His father had once bestowed upon him some great advice: sometimes, if there is doubt, then there really is no doubt at all.

Dom took a deep breath and found a shadow where he felt most invisible. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed the number for the police department. He briefly thought about calling 9-1-1, but decided against bringing too much attention to what was fundamentally a gut feeling.

The smoky voice that answered the phone could have been male or female. “Fisherman’s Cove Police Department. Is this an emergency?”

“No emergency,” Dom said. “Is Chief Kramer in his office?”

“Who’s calling, please?”

“This is Father D’Angelo with St. Katherine’s Parish. I’d like to speak with the chief if I could.”

“Good evening, Father. I’m sorry, sir, but the chief is not available at the moment. It’s a little late.”

Of course it was a little late. After ten-thirty, for hese the mines!”

“No!” Thomas and Stephenson answered together.

“Scorpion might be out there,” Thomas added.

He realized they were losing. Throwing Scorpion’s instructions to the wind, he’d changed the selector on his rifle from single-shot to three-round burst. The improved volume of fire slowed the attackers down, but as the breech on his weapon locked open for the third time and he inserted his fourth and final magazine, he realized that he was thirty rounds away from being in real trouble. Even as the thought passed through his mind, he fired another two bursts. Make that twenty-four rounds from a world of hurt.

He slid the empty mags across the floor to his mother. “Hurry, Mom!” he shouted. She moved in slow motion, as if in a trance.

There were no targets, per se, to shoot at. Instead, he found himself targeting the sparkles of muzzle flashes along the tree line and in the grass. His father had repositioned to the rear of the house again, where he apparently had all kinds of targets to shoot at, emptying clip after clip of automatic weapons fire through the two windows he commanded.

Out front, the man Thomas had shot would not shut up. He screamed like a wounded animal, begging for someone to help him. If it hadn’t been so unnerving, it would have been sad. Twice, as Thomas stuck his weapon through the open widow to take another shot at the tree line, he’d considered helping the poor bastard to a bullet to his head, but both times he stopped himself. What was the point of wasting a bullet on someone who was already hit?

He fired two more bursts. “Mom! Hurry on the reload! I’m almost out! You’ve got to work faster!”

But she’d either gone deaf or was ignoring him, because she just kept her head down and continued to fumble with the rifle he’d already slid to her. “Jesus, Mom! Hurry.” She was unmoved. It was as if she’d set a pace for herself, and was by God going to stick to it.

A two-man team charged forward, and he cut them down.

His breech locked again. Unarmed now, and facing a yardful of attackers, just what the hell was he supposed to do? As the wounded man continued to scream, Thomas heard his father fire another six or seven shots through the back window.

“This is fucking crazy,” he mumbled, and he scrambled on hands and knees across the wooden floor to his mother, who was crying as she struggled with the bullets.

“I’m sorry,” she snuffled. “I’m trying, I’m really trying.”

He snatched the magazine from her, along with the box of bullets, and scooted back toward the window. It felt about half-full. There had to be a better way.

Wait. There was a better way.

No, it was crazy.

No, it was the only answer.

Spinning like a propeller on the smooth pine floor, he scrambled back to his mother and grabbed her arm. “Mom, come with me,” he said.

She looked horrified. “I can’t.”

“You have to.” He tightened his grip and dragged her toward his window.

“Ow!” she hollered. “Thomas, you’re hurting me!”

He ignored her, even as he heard his father boom his name from the other room.

Once again at the window, he peeked up long enough to fire again into the night, and then he ducked down again. He was hined. “Someone has to reload. I have to reload. I promise I’ll do it faster.”

“Mom, goddammit, shut up and listen to me. All you have to do is fire out the window. Just for a few seconds.”

“I can’t.”

“And try not to hit me.”

That last part flew right by her, unnoticed. “I can’t do it, Thomas. Please don’t make me.”

He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Then don’t,” he said.

He snapped his night vision back into place, and hefted himself up and over the sill into the night.

The rate of fire outside doubled.

Dom entered the sanctuary through the side door and locked it behind him. He made a beeline for the space behind the confessionals where a semiconcealed door led to the concrete stairway into the basement. As intimidating an underground space as Dom had ever seen, the cavernous basement under St. Kate’s had been blasted out of solid rock during construction back in the thirties, and as far as Dom knew, it still contained every item that had ever been deposited there. Boxes of old bulletins and stacks of broken furniture lined the walls, and in the middle, stoutly constructed metal shelves held all manner of old toys, tools, gardening equipment, and even three cases of beer that might have dated back to Prohibition. Even with the overhead lights turned on, you needed a flashlight to find anything. Over the years, Dom had considered assigning children to the task of cleaning the place up as a form of particularly aggressive penance, but always backed off in the end.

He hurried to the far side and pushed an ancient Nativity scene out of the way to gain access to the mostly blocked heavy door that would take him into Jonathan’s tunnel. A crooked picture hid the keypad, which was recessed into the concrete wall.

Dom settled himself before entering the code, knowing that he only had three shots at getting it right. He punched the 14 numbers carefully, using the ridiculous mnemonic that he’d never shared with anyone. “TRA HELEFUNT BOX” produced the numeric code, 8-7-2-4-3-5-3-3-8-6-8-2-0-9, an entirely random cipher. He pressed Enter, listened as the locks slid out of place, and then pushed the heavy panel open. Using the green glow from his cell phone, he found the light switch. Fluorescent light tubes flickered to life, revealing the passage.

Once inside, he didn’t bother to close the door on his end. Instead, he took the eight steps to the tile floor in two strides, and ran the distance to the other end, where another heavy door stood between him and the basement of the firehouse. As he entered the identical code, it occurred to him that he’d never passed through this portal without Jonathan at his side. In fact, be believed that this was the first time he’d even been in the tunnel alone. What would be the point? When the locking pin cleared, he pushed on the door to open it.